From: StoneOx17@aol.com
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 09:59:14 EST
Subject: (urth) Castaway, Doors, and the Ancient Mariner
I think Charles Reed is absolutely right when he sees echoes of the
Ancient Mariner in Castaway. I just want to comment that the Ancient
Mariner is also referenced a couple of times in TAD, as well. First, at
the Grand Hotel, when Green sees a ship motionless, fighting a headwind,
this makes him think of a poem: "A teacher had read it to him in school:
'As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.'" Second, when he
is thinking about streetcars, he thinks "They had been cheap, energy
efficient, and nonpolluting. Yet they had been done away with, and a
hundred harmful gadgets had been allowed to stay." To my ear, this
echoes Coleridge:
The many men, so beautiful! / And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things / lived on; and so did I.
One thematic parallel of The Ancient Mariner to TAD seems fairly
clear: Green's life is going nowhere until he finds religion/meaning/Lara.
I don't see any further connections of the poem to There Are Doors, but
they may just be more deeply hidden.
--Stone Ox
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